syncopated.

Bite race

Bite race
(nanyang street, anyone??)

at first it caused some confusion among my parents.

"huh...?", stares with mildly astonished look," i tot u quit byte already?"

so let me explain. 2 weeks ago, wei ming invited me to this very race, competitors mainly being people of the riverlife church in pasir ris and their friends. i was initially reluctant, but i was free, it was a holiday (after national day), and i get to meet new people.

met with some of his friends last friday at a bbq at ray's house. it was quite a gathering, about 40 people altogether. most were taking part in the race. we played icebreaker games, i had to do some simple forfeit for double wacko (just drink salt water... my partner couldn't stand it hah), and then they played some really exhibitionist basketball. which is a game i can grasp, but not something i would like to take up.

that's besides the point. their basketball was seriously pro. for me to play was to tarnish their game.

anyway, back to the story. at 9, our bite team met at riverlife church. we consisted of ming, greg, andy, jon lui and jared, all from acsi. from what we gathered from the briefing (130+ teams! siao...) the aim was, in simple terms, to use the given clues to find 4 stations aka amazing race, whence the station master would then give a task, which had to do with eating some supposedly good food. we could also complete an optional bonus if we wanted to, but we needed to be back at the church by 430 or risk dsq.

1st team back wins...


6 of them! runner up prize oso... some vouchers.

oh ya. and when we are finding the stations, can only make use of bus, mrt and our own two feet. no taxi, no mothers.

teams were also split up into different coloured groups, so different colour got different route, different four stations.

so when we started, we had to go to city plaza (short walk from paya lebar mrt), which was simple enough. other than being jacked by the team in front of us, not much trouble. each of us were blindfolded and given some artificial food to eat. i had plum - ate 3, crammed the last 3 into my mouth, and had to cough them all out in the toilet.

then things got interesting.

the next clue. it read "nanyang street".

i would just like to challenge everyone to find me an actual street sign with those exact words. because we sure couldn't find any. it wasn't in the road directory (we asked taxi drivers, mrt controllers, sisters studying at home...). nanyang ave/drive were both near boon lay, on the other side of the country. furthermore, we had been told that the race would be held between south, central and eastern parts of Singapore. you could imagine our situation.

however, this wasn't the exact place. it was just a 'clue', a tricky one at that. so i speculated that perhaps it was the name of a food place, like "mr so-and-so's nanyang street coffeeshop". we then agreed that chinatown was our best bet. even the mrt controller thought that it must be so.

at least we tried.

we actually ended up finding a station. only it wasn't our route station. lol!! damn funny, but damn frustrating.

some more, their clue super easy one. it read like this:

cow car water
(smith street)

rather simple hor.

then somebody from hq called ming to check on us. then he actually told us something quite astonishing.

nanyang street is a nickname. it is the old nickname of a certain purvis street near raffles hotel.

i mean like wtf la. even taxi driver dun know leh. how you expect us to know that sh**? anyway, everybody oso angry already, i won't say more on the wonderful committee.

so after making fruitful use of one and a half hours, we were finishing two greasy plates of chicken rice at purvis street. we actually met another team there who said they were leaving for their bonus task already.

we had much better luck with the next two stations. the first, andy lived there, simpang bedok if i'm not wrong. ate roti prata, had drinks, then the next station was 'jurong fermented toufu". after stumbling around, we also found that one, finished two plates without hands (silly rule).

by this time, it was roughly 315pm. we were thinking whether we could do the bonus and be back in time. the problem was that...

... for the bonus, we needed to travel all the way to ikea in queensway to get four dollars worth of receipt from their food court. requiring 30 min to get to redhill mrt, wait for the ever-so-slow bus 33, get the silly receipt, and get back to base by 430.

we took the risk lor. and it was cool man. the time between leaving redhill and getting back to the same mrt station was about 15 minutes. we waited only a bit for 33, then when we reached ikea, we dashed pass all the shoppers to the food court. a few of my teammates grabbed some milk cartons costing 1 dollar each (come to think of it, might expensive they were) while i queued first. we were then out and immediately caught a returning 33! lol super sia.

even then, it was a long wait getting back to the church. sprinted back, and closely made it.

now comes even more interesting stuff. there were many people already there (not very surprising - we sort of expected that), many of which hadn't done the bonus. however, some teams had done the bonus and managed to come in around 2 pm!! they even had time to go home, shower, and then come back for the results.

apparently they had very easy clues. some more, they're bonus was at tampines mall... very the far.

ok to wrap up, we obviously didn't win any sort of prize, we obviously felt cheated. (we wanted moderation!! lol) there was a lengthy, unneccessary (no offence to be taken here) service before the prizes were given out.

lessons learnt: do not trust kiasu singaporeans. cooperate, think. chou tou fu is not that bad. riverlife church is a nice building. so are its people.

there is a twang in the heart when i see christians in song worship. they were all jumping around with hands in the air. there was so much energy.

yet i still feel that there really is an empty purpose. a faith in something that can't really be felt.

dear christian friends, please do not take any insult from these last lines. they are my sincere feelings - that can't be changed. i would still very much want you guys as friends.

all in all, a long post. peace out then.

vertical horizon...

beautiful disaster...

Strummed at 9:36 PM (x)